03 June 2015

Nippon
Connection asked me to curate a selection of animated shorts for this year’s
festival. We are delighted that Yuki Hayashi, director of the animated
music video Fragments of Journey for
the band moskitoo will be able to attend the
screening.

The title of
this programme is an allusion to experimental artist Toshio Matsumoto’s famous 1975 work “Everything Visible in Empty”
which itself was inspired by an old Chinese saying. Visual media has become an inescapable part
of our daily lives and it is increasingly difficult for artists to stand out
among the crowd. This programme features
recent works by independent artists who are cultivating their own distinct
visions through their art.

The artists
come from a range of backgrounds from across Japan. There are a number of different styles
represented including stop motion, hand drawn, and CG animation. Many of these artists, such as the
Oscar-winning animator Kunio Kato
and his Robot Inc. colleague Osamu Sakai, have already established themselves
at international festivals, while others (Makiko Sukihara, Yukie Nakauchi) are
young artists who are just starting out.

Dino Sato studied architecture and
brings an interesting structural perspective to his work. Osaka based animators Makiko Sukihara and Kohei
Matsumura blend scientific observation with artistic impression in their 12
layer hand drawn study of the life of crows. Similarly, Masahiro Ohsuka takes a scientific approach to his work,
investigating the relationship between nature and machines and the abstract and
the concrete.

In contrast,
artists like Masamu Hashimoto take a
more playful approach to animation transforming everyday objects into objects
of wonder using traditional stop motion techniques. Masanobu
Hiraoka’s beautifully colour-blocked works present a riveting kaleidoscopic
perspective of life.

Yoshinao Sato’s Newspaper is the English language version of his film Papers.
Both films present mesmeric montages of newspapers (the English version
includes The Japan Times, USA Today, and the International Herald Tribune) in a kind of a tribute to the paper
format of a medium that most people these days are digesting via digital means.

The final film
of the program is Dark Mixer by Hirotoshi Iwasaki. It won the HAFF Grand Prix for Best
Non-Narrative Short in March.
Iwasaki has a master’s degree in Contemporary Arts from Geidai and is
currently working on his doctorate there.
Dark Mixer was inspired by the
connections he sees between alchemy and rotoscope animation. He writes: “The idea behind the title is to
take everyday things and dump them into the mixer/blender to create something
that is unfamiliar to us. It may lead us to look at everyday life in a
different way” (source).

This is a
programme full of contrasts that challenges us to think about our relationship
to the world around us in all its diverse aspects.

Many thanks
to Martin Yougle for his assistance in organising this event.

The Osaka-based animation team of Makiko Sukikara (director/animator) and Kōhei Matsumura (screenwriter/producer) are young artists to watch. Filmed on a multi-plane animation table, this beautifully painted film depicts the natural world in all its beauty and savageness. The film won a New Face Award for animation at the Japan Media Arts Festival 2013. Read Full Review

Masanobu Hiraoka’s animated shorts play with colour-blocking and metamorphosis. Watching his films is like peering into a kaleidoscope. His short, Land, with music and sound design by Aimar Molero, was a Vimeo Staff Pick.